Lots of critically important issues will be decided tomorrow night in initiative and referendum elections in states across the country. Probably the two most significant are at opposite ends of the country. In California, Proposition 8 would – again – put California among states officially defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In Massachusetts, voters have an opportunity to repeal the state income tax by approving Question 1.
These contests typically get little or no coverage on election night and it can be all-but-impossible to find out the results from network and cable analysts who are fixated on the presidential race and top congressional contests. So up steps the great folks at Ballotpedia.org, who have the world’s greatest web site for the facts on all state and local ballot initiatives and referendums year-round.
Ballotpedia.org will be posting election night results as soon as they become available. Go here for a video for more details. Ballotpedia.org is a project of the Citizens in Charge Foundation. I love the sound of that! And they are doing tremendous work.
UPDATE: Six Million Page Views!
Just heard from Leslie Graves at Ballotpedia, who tells me the site’s total page views exceeded six million this morning, thanks chiefly to an explosion of traffic during the past two weeks. Lifehacker put Ballotpedia on its front page last week and PC World named Ballotpedia.org one of the 20 best election web sites for 2008. And the site now has more than 1,200 registered users. Who says nobody cares about initiatives and referendums!?!
Leslie added a sample of what others have said.
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Ballotpedia:What_people_are_saying
and what the-ever-picky bloggers have said about it:
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Ballotpedia:Bloggers_using_Ballotpedia
Finally, Leslie ever so diplomatically noted that the Sam Adams Alliance became the folks behind Ballotpedia.org earlier this year. I knew that …. really …. I did…. no, I mean it, I really did …..
